Simplifying documentation for South Africans with Jesse Green-Ep 59

Today on the relocated South African podcast I'm joined by Jesse Green, a fellow lacquer network member, entrepreneur advisor who has experienced both sides of the immigration journey. He's also the founder of apostole.co.z/a, or about that later. Jesse is based in Sevilla in Spain, which is exactly three hours away from where I am in Lagos. So welcome Jesse. Thank you very much, Jan. Thanks very much for having me. It's a lacquer to have you. So just to start, I always ask the question, where did you grow up, go to school, and how did you get to leave South Africa? Yeah, that is a very interesting story. To try and condense it into only a, you know, less than a minute. My birth was in Stelmbosch and I landed with my bum in the battery and that both my parents worked at the university which allowed me to study there for free. After that I moved to Cape Town and I did a stint in Johannesburg as well. I also did a very short stint overseas teaching English in Russia. I've always been a traveler. Always been someone is very excited to travel experience other cultures, not just go on to the most visited tourist spots. And there were push and pull factors for my decision to leave South Africa. I wasn't one of those South Africans that unfortunately had some, you know, a crime happened to them or something like this or, you know, couldn't move up in my job or whatever. You know, we hear lots of these reasons in the work that we do at Apple Steel. But I was more, it was more financial for me, what I called the double taxation where you paid tax but then you had to pay again to get proper service delivery for things like medical education and policing. As well as pull factors where there were better things overseas. Of course one can always argue of both ways. And South Africa is also a wonderful country as well. I still have family there. I'm in the special position that I also have children in South Africa as well. So I'm back in South Africa very often. And so yes, I have left South Africa in the one sense and in the other sense I haven't left the country. Why did I do Spain? That was just because it was in Europe and Spain and Germany were at the top of my list because I speak German and at that time I didn't speak Spanish and it was very hard on our green member passport to get into either of those countries. So I actually started with the sort of immigration loophole in Hungary. But once I found one in Spain I moved straight to Spain. Oh wow. I mean I didn't know about Russia. Tell us when was that to when did you live in Russia? That was very long ago. That was 21 years ago in 2005. I was there. I was in a con call at a small town. I was at small city, Jakarta in Burk just over the Euro mountains to our flight to the east of Moscow. And I told English there in a time when not many people they did speak English and it was quite exciting and really immersed myself in the culture and did very well with the language or though my Russian is very rusty now. So I think I've taken it off my LinkedIn profile I can't remember. But yeah, it was an absolutely amazing time and it has given me a great perspective into Russia and Russians while we are currently in a time where at least from the west they are often considered with a certain generalization based on the war. So yeah, I have a very different perspective to most of my peers. That's so interesting because I don't know if you know I spoke to Ilagarni on the podcast the other day. And Liviv in Ukraine, South Africa, and it's interesting to hear the perspectives. I think there are so many perspectives on this thing one that's driven by mainstream media and the real perspective. So that's so interesting. So when did you end up in Spain? So Spain, well the way that I left South Africa was probably different to most especially for people who are leaving with families or leaving for work or more many other reasons. The way I left was in 2017/18 and the reason I say it like that so broadly is because I started going over coming back to South Africa going over for a longer period of time coming back to South Africa until eventually I was in Spain most of the time due to a change in my circumstances. I would have been very happy to be bouncing between the two countries on a more regular basis. But I have a wife and a child in Spain now. So obviously I'm more tired just spending more time here. And so 2017/18 so I always say that I've been here for eight years so far. Okay, cool. And Jesse when you think about living in Spain I mean you also chose just probably different to a pure immigrant because you know you have a partner, a wife who's actually Spanish. But is that very different to what you would say the typical South African would be who arrives there, goes on the South Africans in Spain group and tries to meet other South Africans? Is your journey a bit different? Yes, well my journey did start off with me being on my own. Obviously it was me being single here so I would say one difference is that it is somewhat more challenging to meet people. Obviously if you have a partner or a very good friend in the country that you're moving to, you have much quicker access to meet other people as well. I would say in the beginning I went to a lot of events where just foreigners in general, I don't think I ever even met a South African maybe once or twice. You know, we're in general they offer us there that speak your language so that you can start to try and get you know other contacts and make other friends, other connections. I think some people would probably also look at going to find their church or you know some place of worship in their area. I don't have that but I know that that works well for some people. There are those groups on Facebook too. South Africans in sunny Spain is one of them and yes they occasionally do have events or they're obviously not that many South Africans in Spain. It is difficult to connect with them here. I recall once there was a poll on that group that said where are you based in Spain and I was the only person that ticked severe so I don't know if there are many others. We also had a South African Afrikaans travel episode series that was saying are there any South Africans in severe we'd like to interview and at that time I wasn't in Spain and I said to them can you wait and they couldn't wait and I asked them afterwards did you find anyone and they said no. So it seems like there aren't many South Africans in severe or if any but that's okay I travel so regularly within the country and to other countries I have my full of South Africa and South Africans I'm not worried about. And I must say severe is just a magnificent place and it's beautiful city and wonderful golf course or so. It's like that from me it's a great place. So what do you I mean like and appreciate about Spain is the food, the wine, the weather. Well, it's only so many things. I mean it isn't absolutely amazing country I am very happy here. I think the only challenge people do ask me for a South African coming here if I compare to a country such as Portugal is the lack of English. There is actually quite a bit of English here but you don't easily find it. Spanish are quite shy. In fact the easiest way for me to get a Spanish to speak English in the beginning was to try and speak my Spanish which was poor in the beginning. And once they heard that they switched to English and they realized their poor English is better than my poor Spanish. But that changed later and I noticed that they no longer changed into English. So one key thing but wherever you go in the world you need to try and immerse yourself in that culture. You're never going to be 100% that culture or I'm never going to be 100% Spanish even if I try because I'm not originally South African and I will eventually have Spanish. So there's a citizenship and be Spanish and I'll be Spanish enough to be a Spanish citizen and that's fine. But a big part of cultural immersion is the language. In any country wherever you go, even if you go to America they still speak English. Some of us will disagree. They still speak English. But they speak it differently. They have different ways of saying things. They have different cultural innuendos when they say things and so you need to get into that. That's incredibly important. So Spanish has been a challenge for me. I've taken about three times as long to get to the same level as I was in Russian because in Russia there was no choice. No one speaking English except when I was giving class on that. Everyone is speaking Russian. If you don't study this you're going to really suffer. And in many situations and in the beginning it was very daunting but because you're forced to you do. Whereas in Spain especially if your partner speaks a lot of English to you and you work still in English with English people it's going to be a challenge to find your way with the So I really had to put my mind down and paint a paper and take lessons and do that. To the point where now I'm very comfortable wherever I go, I have no concerns about picking up the phone and doing things and there are situations where I need one word or something like that. But my point here is you really do need to learn the language. And what other thing? You actually ask me what things are good about Spain? The food is phenomenal. The weather is one of the best in Europe, especially in the south of Spain. In the north of Spain, they complain there's too much rain. But here in heaven, for bed you go to Germany or Sweden or something like this. So the weather is very good. The travel opportunities are amazing. There's lots of business opportunities. This is one of the most visited countries of tourists. We're often switching between France as the number one. And number two, there is this beautiful scenery, lots to do. It's not expensive in comparison to the rest of Europe. And there are lots of options now to get into Spain. Yeah, I would say it's just a phenomenal place to be. And I think many South Africans have been to Spain because as I say, it's a very well visited tourist destination. So I would say it should actually be on one of them up there. If the South African is not sure yet where they want to go. And if they are open to not going to an English speaking country, like the USA or Australia or US or UK, one of those. Then if they're looking in Europe, I would seriously consider Spain and Portugal where you are where there's more English as options to to emigrate to. Absolutely. I think just a point on when you emerge yourself. For me, it's about respect for the country that you're living in. You're kind of, yes, I'm a resident and whatever. But I'm a guest. I can't make them South African. I'd rather respect their culture and behave in a decent way. And I think that's an important thing. I think a lot of people say no, even for it would be South African and stuff that. So I think for me, that's a critical thing. But I like what you say when you speak on the phone when I was in France. I felt for myself that I was now at a fine level when I could answer the phone in French and they responded back in French. So I know exactly what you're coming from. And I'm like, and I respond back in French. Absolutely. I don't know what they were saying, but at least they did. And Jason, when I mean, just interesting talking about Spain as a destination for immigration. The one thing I'm not sure of and it's a question that comes up is, is all text situation for expats. If you arrive in Spain, how difficult is the text situation? Yes. I'm actually not sure how it is. If you arrive tomorrow as in very recently. If there's been any changes, I don't think we have anything like the Netherlands has where you have the city percent rule and these sort of things. So as far as I understand you would just slots, if you were paying text in Spain and again, you know, some people may still be paying in South Africa. They need to deal with the double taxation and all of that stuff. For me now, having text immigrated from South Africa, paying in Spain, I've fit just into the standard taxation slots. And the taxation is, I would say, for most people, I would guess is going to be a little bit more than South Africa. At least the text brackets are quite similar, actually. They're always within 1 to 5% only different to South Africa as far as I've seen. I could be corrected by someone in finance. However, there's many deductions here. And of course, there's not the double taxation. We have to pay again for services. Here, you barely would need, I mean, again, some Spanish people would argue with me and wherever they live. They're far more afraid of someone may break in, but there's not going to be any break in here. Unless they know you have something of extreme value in your house, maybe then. So there's good policing. There is, you know, the police here, I can go up to a policeman and have a great chat with him. And I just feel like he's my friend or is in South Africa. I don't feel like they're not my friends, but they, I wouldn't go up to them and have a chat. I try to avoid them, you know. And education, you can get a good quality education for, for, you know, very minimal price and also health care. Wait times, but health care is excellent. So you may pay the same or even a bit more tax, but you'll get really good services. Okay. And health care, I mean, that comes up in a lot of conversations. Is it all run by the state? Would you have private health that you pay for? Yes, you can have private health care, which is again, very high quality. But I must say that because I have both for a number of reasons, but I would say that sometimes you go to the private health care. Well, sorry, sometimes you go to the state health care because it's closer or some reason like that. And actually you think, well, why am I paying the private health care? Other times, like someone I know here who needed an elderly man who needed a knee replacement, the wait time was very long. And luckily he was also covered in Germany. So when he went there, the wait time was two weeks. So, you know, again, there may be ups and downs to that. But for myself and my 40s, I probably don't need the private health care insurance. It's the same in Europe everywhere that the, you know, here, if you, if you're in real trouble, you have a major accident or something happens to you, a heart attack, the state will look after you big time. Very well. Don't go for elective surgery because then you will wait the same. Correct. I think it's very, very much the same thing. One of the reasons of private insurance, for example, is because of my extreme travel. So it actually saves me money to not have to take our travel insurance each time. Yeah. So yeah, can you imagine? And you briefly touched on cost of living just yours. You travel around Europe a lot and so do we and obviously Portugal is probably at the lowest end of the cost of living in Europe. But what's what's it like in Spain? I could have I could have searched the sun on a calculator online, I guess. But it's certainly in terms of Europe, it's low. You know, we can go here and go and have a beer or a coffee. And I find that if I compare the price of that to what I pay in Germany, it's going to be half. Or in other countries, obviously, Norway is always said that it's got the highest costs, but man, it's just it really is inexpensive. Of course, there are restaurants you can find where you're going to pay higher prices. And somebody else can argue about the quality of the cut, but in general, you're getting good food at a really low price here. And I can tell I can tell you that any tourist that's been to Spain will tell you whenever they've ordered their beers that they just get these tapas for free. And it's just so much food just comes at them. And it's all just so cheap and they just can't believe it. They're just they're just laughing. It's so interesting. We always compare with my daughter lives in Dublin. And they will pay for a glass of wine would we pay for a bottle for instance. And it's pretty much if we look at food in a pub or a sort of a bistro type of environment, they will pay double what we pay in in Portugal. People tell me so that's because we become really expensive as well. So, you know, the inflation is caught up there. I haven't been for a while. But it sounds like the inflation is catching up there as well. Yes, lorally I think the cost of living is increasing and so that. And I think in Africa in general, you need to have a good amount of money to have a good life. If you don't, you know, no one's going to look after you. You said that you travel a lot on every Chomney days a year, do you spend away from home? She calculated this in for 2024. It was a third of the year. I think it was 122 days. So it was 33% of my time was spent not sleeping in my bed at home. So as around the world going back to South Africa. And, and then also traveling around around the world. And sometimes I vlog about that on my YouTube channel. I go back to South Africa quite a lot because as I mentioned, I still have two children there. And also I still run my business and have friends and family there like I think most people do. So there's a lot for me to go back to sometimes to handle. So I mean, South Africa around six or seven times a year. Tell me how did this business apostil.co.cd? How did it come about? Yes. So apostil AP OSTIL is the name of the company. The actual word for an apostil is with two Ls and an E. So AP OSTIL. And that's a stamp on a document for international use. But during my travel, I mean, sorry, during my immigration to Spain, I needed to get a whole lot of documents. So there's one thing that the Spanish are not very famous or infamous for is that it's called Papileo in Spanish that you need a hair cover lot of documentation. So all documents needed to be less than three months old. I was told even my birth certificate needed to be less than three months. months old and so basically I needed to go and get all these documents ready. I needed to have them apostyle and translated and this was a real job getting this whole document pack ready. I didn't have all the documents ready and my passport was, you know, I had a lot of time left on it but the documents were the challenge. So I even had an Excel spreadsheet making sure I had them already at the same time and this prompted me to require assistance because I couldn't get to Pretoria for these aposteles. Well, rather I maybe could but then it would have cost me a lot of time and money. So was there anyone there who could do it? And the actual original document needs to be apostyle. So I found a few companies online but to be honest, the website didn't imbue a lot of trust with me. Some of them said, send it to me and here's my gmail address and my self-reinver and I looked at the price they were charging and I thought that's per document but it's the same person in this in the queue and I thought, well, this is now actually maybe an opportunity for me to open something up, you know, like this and what else do South Africans need help with when they're going overseas? You know, bank accounts and some cards in South Africa or I don't know what do they need assistance with. So that was the births actually of apostyle as a company that would assist South Africans at home. You know, you're sort of person at home who would assist you with whatever you're required while you're overseas or while you're immigrating. Very quickly went down the route of documentation because I found that the demand was extremely strong in that area, documentation and visa assistance. They do still help with one or two other things but you know, they are things that almost relate to documents like ancestral searching and those other things. But very quickly we had a lot of people interested in assisting them with aposteles obtaining birth certificates, police clearances, registering marriages and divorces, doing certain tasks in South Africa. And the company grew quite quickly and yeah, as I said, I was in and out of South Africa. To the point where almost 10 years later we've serviced over 20,000 South Africans both outside and inside South Africa and we have a host of services now on our website. We have a team of between 10 and 20 people depending on how you can't them because some people we only use in certain situations because we have representation across all 14 high courts in the country. So if you need something from the Blumfontein High Court we can also assist you there but then we use a third party so I can't really say they're part of our team but on the other hand they are. So between 10 and 20 people and we also have a notary on board. So a lot of the requirements that South Africans have are assistance with legal things whether it's an anti-napped for contract because they're getting married overseas or whatever it may be. So we find that the business has been really successful, it's still growing. We are very engaging with South Africans abroad. We deal with hundreds of them every single day and yeah we hope long may at last although if I may just add in there that we do also hope that some government departments in South Africa do make it easier for South African people to do that. Maybe detrimental to our business we all pros are Africa as well as pro going and exploring the world. So yeah that may be a case but you're always going to need an apostil if you're using a document abroad in a country which is also part of this apostil convention then they're going to need to know that that document is legit and an apostil verifies the stamp and signature on that document and you're going to need that. So so I mean just stepping back to when you started the business what were you actually doing at the time? Yes that's a good question. I started off in recruitment out of the university I moved that's when I moved up to Joeburg I had mustn't in Russia but I was very quickly drawn to the digital side of recruitment or just online and eventually left recruitment to start something online it was more in e-commerce it was very similar to those group on websites you saw long ago. So Katmitee there in many other facets of running an online business but over the next few years really what I chiseled out for myself was I didn't like these adverts online where you know it's just you paying on it's called CDM you're just paying when the advert loads and maybe the person didn't see it and then the next level closer to a sale is you paying for a click and I didn't like that either because what if the click's turned convert and the next level is you paying for someone to fill in a form on your website and that I liked because now you know as long as the form is correct and the rest of the marketing has been done right then you know you can sell this lead and the company they've got the staff to turn this into a sale and so I could operate on my own like that so I did a lot of lead generation for a very long time and I really enjoyed that a lot and that's actually what I thought I would do in the beginning with Apple Steel but as I say within a year it was it was so inundated I needed to hire my first you know assistance and and that's what what what has happened since now so I mean the question that comes up in my mind is and we've all been through it if a bit every single person that listened to the podcast or that I've interviewed has had the same issue is you doesn't matter how much money you have you still need documents you know and is this born was it born out of inefficiency or lack of knowledge or part of the consumer it's supposed to a degree but also the fact that you as you say no matter how you put your pants on in the morning well actually no everyone puts their pants on the same way and this is what I was taught in recruitment don't worry talking to the CEO he puts his pants on the same way in the morning so no matter who's putting on the fancy money they're going to need documentation and they're going to need it whether they leave South Africa or not you know they're going to need this for many reasons for example if you get married the high court isn't passing all these so sorry divorce the high court's not passing all these divorce decreased to home affairs and getting them registered you've got to go and register your divorce so we can't send their people doing we've got an automated marital status check on our website I think it's the only one that existed at the moment for so Africans online and you you just every single day we have people saying oh but that's incorrect I'm not made or I'm not divorced or luckily we haven't had anyone say I'm not murdered bottom line you're going to need something and if you are very ritual then you can obviously pay somebody to to do it for you but you don't actually have to be that rich you know you you really can pay people to do these services for you and it's a much better bet I had the same experience myself when I applied for my first Spanish residence permit I applied for the incorrect permit in the incorrect way and got denied and as soon as I resigned myself to the fact that I need assistance with this I went to an expert immigration firm in Madrid they applied for the correct permit in the correct way and in two weeks I had it in my passport it was literally that fast because in Cape Town they're not processing many of those got an appointment fast went in the fast and it was easy for them to see that I qualified and it was just done yeah you know that that's the difference in result that if you're going to try and do it yourself and that is the inefficiency you speak about unfortunately there is a lot of government inefficiency in South Africa it's not only South Africa all over the world there's government inefficiency they are countless businesses all over the world that are up and running because of government inefficiency VFS is one of those you know and these are these are facilitation services there's a massive firm servicing so many governments all over the world with the embassies and even in their own countries and earning lots of many paid by the consumer you know to facilitate things for the government because they couldn't hire people themselves to handle these things more efficiently so we are simply one of those and we you know it's all about it's not about who you know it's about what you know because we know what kind what type of person is able to avoid a homophage queue you know a marriage officer for example we know which box to tick and which box not to tick we know which door to go knock on to say hey have you actually received this verbally to someone we know where to drive to we know just we just have so many in in so many ways that it would be impossible for somebody on their own to go and do all of those things so it's just you know how much is your time worth I'll end on this sorry and I'm taking up a lot of time with this one and on this this is a classic one where at least once a week I'll have someone say to me but how can you charge you know you know us to to do this whereas it costs me 150 ran to do this at homophage and then I just literally say to them but does it really cost you 150 ran to do that at homophage because when you take into account simply the time it takes you to stand there to get in to to then stand in another queue and pay that money to then be told something like you don't have it in cash or you I don't know whatever thing and then to have to come back again or you know if you get it the application in then you must take another day's leave to pick up the the document or whatever it may be, you don't know how long it's going to take all of these stress factors. So it really is not a 150 round. It's thousands of rands. And for some people whose time is a lot of money, 1000 rand an hour, this will cost you 5,000 rand because you're going to spend five hours on it. And when you see it from that perspective, you actually realize that it's far better that, you know, for me to get a positive idea, I'd have to make an appointment in Madrid at my own cost, my way to Madrid, to the embassy, make the appointment. And then I still don't know when I'm getting that positive idea. Then I must go again and collect it if they don't career to me. And instead, I can literally sit in my house watching Netflix or working earning money. And wait for the doorbell to ring through weeks later with DHL saying, here you go. So, you know, basically, that's just a no brainer. So, I mean, just so many questions because we've all been through that's why my mind's going like this. But so if a let's take it to a South African is thinking about immigrating, the typical, last thing you think about is the documentation, maybe when they apply for a visa or residence or whatever. But it sounds to me like the earlier you start the process, the better it is. And the earlier you start getting it good advice, the better it is, would you agree with this? I would say that because typically, I mean, you're not going to say in 10 years, I'm going to am great. That's obviously too early. But even if you say it in the years time, you know, we have this phrase in the office document reading. So, are you document reading? I mean, even at this stage, in your life, if you're listening to this and you say, I'm never going anywhere, but are you document reading? Do you actually have a birth certificate, a married certificate or divorce decree? Is your status correct on the home of his population register? Do you have XYZ, are you document reading? Because many things can happen at any time. And we find people for any reason rushing to us all of a sudden needing something. So, yes, you must ask yourself, what documents do I actually need for this immigration process? Try to find out, usually it's quite easy to find out upfront what you require. An old handwritten birth certificate is not going to count as much as an unabridged birth certificate that's been recently stamped is because you can't get an apostee on a very old document. If the person who's stamped and signed it no longer works, why am I saying you can't have it apostee? So, yeah, it's quite a big thing. And I would say, I would say a year to six months before would really be ideal to ask yourself, are you document reading? And if you aren't sure, give us a call. You know, all go and have a look on these Facebook pages, government websites, where people are actually, let's say it's Australia, go and look on the government website, see what documents are required. AI might be wrong, but at least it can give you an idea. And it's very important to plan. And that was the other thing you spoke about. Government deficiency versus people needing to plan. And Jesse, in terms of the typical services that you provide, let's say within the South African context, home affairs, police clearances, that kind of thing, I mean, how wide is that that range of service that you that you can provide? For instance, a lot of people are asking about these certificates that you need to exchange your driver's license. I mean, that's that's well. Yes, yeah, we do that as well. That is something that one can do on one's own, but very often it's quite delayed. And most countries have the rule where I actually don't think I've seen a country where it's different. For the first six months, you can drive on your South African drivers license. But one day after, you can get huge fines if you're not using that country's driver's license. And not every country has an agreement with South Africa to change the exchange of drivers license. Spain doesn't, I had to start all over again. Really, we're lucky, we could exchange. Yes, yes, I'm aware of that. So basically, you need to get that document. We do offer that document, we offer documents for exporting your vehicle. We offer a lot of documents around businesses and and tax with SARS, although typically people can get those themselves relatively easily, if they have an accountant or something like that. We offer a lot of legal documents, powers, of attorney contracts. If you need something set up stuff that can be done or uplifted at the high court, anything at home affairs pretty much ancestral research. You mentioned SEPS. We can also do expandments where some people qualify to have a record removed. We wanted to offer the what's it called? We renew the registration disk on your car. We found so much competition there. I mean, you can basically do it on your capital app. So we don't offer that at the moment. We also wanted to offer a number of things in the financial space, but we're not an FSP. So we you know, we can easily refer people to that. What we can't help people with is when they apply for a passport or an ID or driver's license. Obviously driver's license and ID test it's inside Africa. We want to do that on your behalf. We aren't you. We can't sit for your photo and we can't give your fingerprints. But in South Africa, we can get you appointments at a home of phase so that you don't need to stand in a queue. There's just so many things that you can do. You mentioned previously that you also deal with even tourist visas and making appointments because that always seems to be an issue getting an appointment. For instance, the US Embassy, are you able to get people appointments there? Yes, absolutely. So we do short term or short stay visas at the moment. We may look at long stay visas in the future. Short stay visas are tourist or business visas where you go for, as it says, tourism or business, maybe as sports event or something like that. So people are constantly buying tickets and tours to go to all over the world and many of these countries. South Africans need visas for. So the US, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, all of Europe, the shing and zone. Japan is quite a big one into Africa. Wherever you need to go, we can help you with a short stay visa. The documentation for that as well. Nick said you were very helpful with these Irish visa because you're coming and issued together to go to Ireland as well. Yes, you mean, Nick Latif? That's why I'm here. Yeah, Nick. Yes. I mean, because that seems to be a quite an issue for South Africans for shing and visa. Can you even get appointments for people overseas? People say people who live in Ireland want to go to a shing in country. How difficult is it to get an appointment for those people? Yeah, so that unfortunately we can't do. We can only help someone. It doesn't have to be a South African, but we can only help people in South Africa. The South African visa applications in the overseas. But I have heard that in some countries it's really hard to get appointments. Oh, it's crazy. Well, but we have some contact services that we can refer people to and sometimes they come right in. So it's worth checking with you before they give up because I hear that's a big problem. Like in Ireland, people wanting to go across to France and they can't because they can't get a shing in visa and some people because they can't get an appointment. So that's why we do. We do have a huge amount of travel agencies and travel agencies. They are very good and it's their business to sell tours and tickets, flights and so on. But they almost never handle the visa side of it. And when the client says, I need a visa or do I need a visa, then they need to start giving advice and way to go and they're very happy to hand over to us and we pay them a healthy commission for handing the client over to us. So yeah, travel agents and in the tourism industry are actually quite active. And if you think about two clients, you talk about more than 20,000 people, what would you say is the biggest mistake that people make in terms of doing these documents and getting access? Because it's almost like a garage purchase, isn't it? I mean, you have to have it, but you don't really want to. Yeah, maybe it's a garage purchase in the sense that as you say, you must have it. So there's no choice. But I think for many of the people, it's a relief that there's a place you can go to and pay. I mean, we've done stuff pro bono once or twice for people and they've asked us, please can we pay you for this? So I think most, as I say, some people say, oh, but it's only 150 random hemophys, but most people are actually saying to us, thank goodness, we have over 2,000, five star reviews and very few one star review or low reviews on Google and another reviews website. And actually, actually, one of the reasons we really do this work is and really feels fulfilling is when you see the absolute relief and see the emails coming through from people and on the phone of how much we've actually helped them and how we've made a change to their life. And I'll give you a very quick example, which we have we have this at least once every once or twice a month where someone wants to get married, they're living overseas. They're getting married now overseas to their partner who belongs to who's a citizen of that country where they're getting married And they obviously happy and in love and it's a big day and all of that and what they haven't thought of is that as a South African Still they need to prove that they're not married back in South Africa and this Document is sometimes called a single status Certificate in some countries in South Africa. It's called a letter of no impediment nothing impedes you from getting married And so a letter of no impediment from homophage needs to be Issued by homophage of course, and then aposteele sometimes and translated and whatever and you know It's now two weeks to the day and they've already booked the hall and all the guests are flying in and all of this stuff And they don't have they suddenly find out they don't have this document and as you can imagine in someone's Mind emotionally the the trauma that they go through and then they find us and they come to us and we say okay Obviously something may still go wrong, but we should be able to help you and you can't imagine these people And we get the document to them and the marriage officer there on that side says this is fine Yeah, you just can't imagine how And so it's supposed I suppose there the thing is the biggest challenge for people the biggest issue for people is That not about a graduate. It's just that they haven't done their homework So you know if you if you do like I said be document ready so if you document ready because you can apply for this at your embassy And you should be able to get it in six months time, you know So if you've done that then then you've done you've done your homework and you won't pay late school fees or whatever you want to call them But luckily for those cases, you know, there are cases where people cannot do it upfront They only they only just got a recruiter phone them with a head-onting phone call and three weeks later They have an offer that they're going to accept but nine one month they must produce it But police clearance to get a new updated work visa with this new company's name on it and stuff like this So they need a police clearance now they need it now and they couldn't have foreseen that so there are those cases And it's good to know that there's someone on the ground and they say that can look after you so yeah I was gonna say there must be an anecdotal stories of really just in time last minute Solutions I'm sure there must be many of those Yeah, I'm trying to think if there's a actual story where we have but you know We have had cases where the person says you know, I'll pay you triple if you can just get this for us And we always tell them look we're not gonna charge you triple But we can't we just can't promise you that we can get and then we put out all the stops and and You know they'll they'll they'll require that document on the forces timing and they'll pay the The the fastest timing price, but we'll really try you know, we'll drive in an extra drive We'll we'll make some extra phone calls and really see what we can do But yeah, there are cases where unfortunately it's just too late and you've got to you've got to try and move that visa appointment or whatever it may be I mean, maybe it's a stupid question, but what causes the biggest delays in in the processing that you do? Oh That is a good question. I mean the biggest delays ever are caused by things like a few years ago Saps didn't pay there that the CRC the criminal records into where they issued the police classes didn't pay They rent I think it was even on the news and And so the landlord locked the bowling up, you know, so it didn't matter if you were working through us Or if you had submitted it from wherever or whatever you're done every police clearance in the world That it that had arrived at the CRC was going to be delayed and it was delayed until finally that was it was lifted And that was three weeks so it literally did not matter who you were what you did There was no police clearance coming to you unless unless you waited three so I think that's the biggest delay That we've ever ever had We've had all kinds of funny things like buying ink and when homophysed there's no ink to print So then we went and bought ink and said yes ink. It's print a lot of different moving parts working very well together to get people stuff You know I sometimes tell my friends it's like you're maddening you have this banana But it's really perfect and it's ripe and you've got to get it from here to there and it's got to be done and everyone let's all work together And and we do and and that banana comes to you and it's Perfect and and still ripe and and nice and colds on the fridge. I guess you know also talking about delays is is you You're capturing of information of the client must be perfect so that that doesn't cause it delay you arrive with a document that not correct Absolutely Yeah, that's correct. We have a CRM system. We adhere to the the poppy law in South Africa you can see that Report and everything on the bottom of our website to unload that so we are very good with people's information and Very trustworthy with everything and we obviously received tons of even unsolicited documents every day So yeah, we have no and we work with with really trusted couriers like the courier guy and DHL I think in the eight or nine years that we've been operating DHL as only once ever lost a document Which we then went and and got reissued and we sent off to the client So that was that was very good We're getting towards it just Question about as an entrepreneur building a business from Spain in South Africa and around the world are difficult is that what advice would you have to somebody doing that? I would say first of all it is difficult Obviously you're not on the ground in South Africa Number two, I would say recruitment and people luckily I had recruitment as I mentioned in my career earlier So I was very well trained in interviewing people and picking up things about people and The the people who've been working with us for six and seven years are still there. We're very happy bunch and and I and I think that That if once you have the right person in place that's really gonna reap a lot of rewards And if you don't know how to recruit then that's in rather higher someone who can assist you because that's going to be a big challenge And then I would also say that If you if you it depends on what sort of control you have and what sort of business you have, you know if you're manufacturing something you obviously need a physical office If you are like us you can consider a more remote work So that's something to also think about again that revolves around people and I would say that If you're based overseas that you're gonna have to go into South Africa every now and again I think it would be challenging to run your whole business From abroad without going to South Africa or answer the idea Last question when you go back to South Africa from Spain What's the first thing that you do that you cannot do in Spain? I mean, I guess I walk in the garden barefoot. I mean well, I can walk in the garden here barefoot But I'm not saying I want to go to the shops barefoot, but I'm Spanish Spanish people are more permanent proper So even in summer you'll find a lot of people are wearing shoes and not wearing the slip-slops and I miss I'm other things that are that I miss that I would definitely buy once I get to the shops would obviously be built on There's actually some good quality built on around overseas, but it's very expensive and Obviously friends and family tried to go to the beach. I'm from Cape Town. So I've got to go to the mountain So those are the kind of things What kind of things that that you do? I mean generally with things I notice people miss when I'm looking online are of food products very much So and we partner with a lot of South African shops overseas We're looking to partner with many more and they are quite a number And so yeah, I think those are the things that I look to do well I think this is probably a good time to say that the relocated South African We'll be partnering with a postal.io.zada in the future and we look forward to working with you JC I'm looking forward to a fruitful partnership Thank you much. I'm pretty sure all your listeners also Africans who are in South Africa thinking of emigrating or have already immigrated Have a need for either our services or just to have a chat with us or to know about us Because we can always tell you what we're seeing in the market and what what we what we're hearing about and give you some Some free advice. Yeah, so best best for people to contact you would be on your website epistil.io.zada. There's a contact form there Correct. There's a form. There's a Joeburg number. There's a WhatsApp line. You can contact us on We are very happy to call you back if it's expensive for your overseas as it is for a lot of South Africans and Email is fine as well. So yeah, we've got it. We've got it all there Just confirming it's APO is T.I.L. io.zada without the double L.E. So that's great. Yeah Awesome. JC. Thank you so much for sharing your journey Your business your perspectives Really really interesting. I love the the conversation and Thank you very much. Thanks for joining us my pleasure I look forward to hearing how many South Africans have wrote and thank you once again Jan 5 in your show Was some end to your listeners if this episode resonated with you Please consider sharing it to someone who might enjoy the conversation, you can find more episodes of the relocated South African on your favorite platform or visit our website, therelocated South African.com. Thank you for listening and see you next time.